Sometimes us older folks can learn a few things from the younger generation-in this case Lori Harvey. Recently I felt frustrated and stuck, and I actually thought about something 20 something beauty Lori Harvey said regarding her high profile breakup from Michael B. Jordan. She said something along the lines that the relationship was no longer serving her.
I got that. For some reason that really hit home for me. You see for the past 4 years or so, I’ve been in an off and on, mostly off relationship with a guy that I thought I liked. He checked the right boxes, so why wouldn’t I be happy. You see I’m on the other side of 40, and the narrative for women in my age bracket isn’t good. So, yeah I guess I was holding on. I was trying to force something to work when I knew it wasn’t. Everything in my gut told me he wasn’t the one, but I was scared to move on. While I don’t know the details of Harvey’s split what I do know is that she seemed ok. Granted she has a lot more options than I do, but still I’m sure that it had to take a bit of courage leaving Michael B. Jordan. You’ve seen him right, he looks pretty close to perfect. And as you can imagine she did get some backlash, but so what, it was no longer serving her.
“…if it’s no longer serving me, I’m going to move on,”
Lori Harvey
This isn’t exactly rocket science but Harvey says there are some green flags that you should look for in a relationship.
- Transparency
- Openness
- Communication
I must admit my last relationship was a train wreck. Any little issue quickly spiraled into a 1000 pound boulder waiting to crush my soul. Why? Quite simply we couldn’t communicate. He’d get mad at me and ignore me for weeks. Remember how I said it was off and on. We’d have a fight and just stop talking until we started talking. Sometimes that was a couple of days, or it could be months later. I get it. You must be able to talk it out. I bet Lori Harvey wouldn’t put up with this foolishness.
Harvey also offered this bit of advice from a previous article:
“Lori says that she’s reached a point of freedom where she is only dating ‘on my terms.’ “However I want to move, whatever I want to do, I’m going to do it,”… “And if it’s no longer serving me, I’m going to move on.”
That’s my favorite part. Where she says the relationship has to serve her. She didn’t stay because it was easy, and she wasn’t worried about what people thought.
As far me, I had a big weekend planned with my ex. It was my birthday and we were going to have a blast, but what should have been a simple fight over a mixup over dates turned into another stressful, frustrating never ending draining back and forth. I could have salvaged my weekend, and we may have had an ok time together, but I didn’t want to. I knew it wasn’t right.
Like Lori Harvey I can say I’ve grown from this past dating experience, and I can also say I don’t plan to ever compromise my peace and happiness again. Right now I’m single, and that’s serving me just fine.